


Coming In From the Cold

by shadeofwrong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3853510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadeofwrong/pseuds/shadeofwrong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Righting all of HYDRA's wrongs that he's carried out will take more than violence. The Winter Soldier haunts a victim from the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming In From the Cold

The countryside beyond the limits of Minsk was deathly silent once night fell. Scattered villages that centered around agriculture retired early, and the treeless hills left no room for the calls of owls. Only the rustling of grass in the wind and the occasional lonely barks of dogs disrupted the quiet. At the edge of one of the more remote towns, a woman stirred in her cottage, sure she had heard something more. She rose from her bed, squinting sleepily at the clock she kept beside it. It was well past midnight, and as few as her visitors were, they never called this late. After more than thirty years of solitude, she didn't have any reason to believe that would change. 

She heard the slightest shuffle from her kitchen, and now she knew she didn't imagine it. Fear suddenly gripped her by the throat as she wrapped a shawl around herself tightly. On anxious feet, she crept to her door, grabbing the poker from her fireplace along the way. From the hallway, she saw that the dim light above her small kitchen table was on, and a figure moved near it in the darkness, on its way to the nearest window. 

“What are you doing?” she demanded, feeling foolish almost immediately. Her heart raced unevenly. “There's nothing here to steal.” She brandished the poker in front of her, mostly out of bravado. No one in the village would be stupid enough to start breaking into other houses. The community was too small to be able to get away with it. That, and she was telling the truth. Very little in the cottage would be considered something of value. However, she knew there were other reasons for people to try and find her. The figure paused for a long time, seeming to consider whether to simply run or to speak.

“I'm not here to steal from you, Zhanna Belitrova.” The voice belonged to a young man, and while his Russian was perfectly fluent, it was bizarrely sterilized of any trace of a regional accent. More disturbing was the use of her real name, the one she hadn't gone by since she was young. Her father's name for her.

“You're a stupid thief, to break into the wrong house,” she spat. Her hand raised to turn on the lights.

“Don't.” His voice darkened, but she wouldn't have listened if he didn't seem to warp across the room like a wraith. She traded places with him, backing towards the light of the kitchen table. “You've been living here under an assumed name since you were driven from Moscow.” 

He watched her from the dark as she clutched the poker to her chest, eying him with disbelief and a quickly surfacing resentment. 

“I'm not going to hurt you.” It was an attempt to be reassuring, almost an uncertain one. Like it was something he wanted to believe. 

“What, then? To mock me, like anyone else who still knows that name?”

“They don't know what really happened to your father.”

“They think they do. Even before the Soviets fell, they were quite sure.” Zhanna shook her head. Fear was making her prattle on.

“Soon my husband will be home, and you'll hate to deal with the village drunk even more than I do.”

“You've lived here alone since 1982. You can call the police if you'd like.” His voice remained even and the implication was clear: he would be gone before she even picked up the phone. That was what she wanted, but once he mentioned her father, Zhanna knew that would get the better of her. 

“Why are you here? To ask me about things that happened before you were born?”

“I know your father didn't kill himself.” The voice hesitated. “I saw.” 

Zhanna Belitrova felt a hot rage rise from her belly like lava, the likes of which she hadn't known since the Moscow police insisted that her father's death was a suicide. At 25, she lived with her father to help maintain the family home after the death of her mother several years before. When she returned late one night from a party, she heard the gunshot in her father's room. By the time she reached him, he was dead on the floor, missing a head from the nose up. A man stood in the open window, but jumped away before she could get a glimpse of anything but a metal arm. Of course, no one swallowed such a tall tale. She was a grieving girl seeing things in the height of hysteria. There was a note in her father's writing, and no evidence that anyone else ever entered their house to kill him. The case was open and shut, but she knew she saw that man. Now, for this shadowy figure to invade her home and claim he knew the truth, after her decades of exile-- _How dare he?_

The anger at the indignity she endured for so long boiled over as she stepped forward and swung the poker at the man. He raised his left arm to protect himself, and when the blow connected, to her horror, there was only the loud clang of metal against metal. The rage twisting her features slipped away as quickly as her color. 

“No. It was so long ago, you can't...” Zhanna Belitrova slumped against the small kitchen table behind her as the poker fell to the ground with a thump. “Christ Jesus,” she gasped out. Was this a trial for her spirit that slowly whittled away as the years went on? Or was she just as insane as they tried to make her out to be at home in Russia?

\----

The Soldier didn't intend for any of this to happen. His plan was simply to leave the file regarding Viktor Belitrov on the woman's table, and then hastily take his leave, all while the village remained asleep. He found it when taking out another HYDRA cell in Bucharest, buried with other records of their Cold War activity. While there were traces of his missions throughout them, the 1979 assassination of a Soviet politician stood out to him. Not only was the hit disguised as something else, he remembered it. The crimes HYDRA forced him to commit more than ten years in the past came and went in flashes, but after reading the file, distinct memories came back to him. Belitrov was one of the dissenting members in the late Brezhnev era Politburo over the decision to invade Afghanistan. Strife in Eurasia was slowly being engineered by HYDRA, and its Soviet components needed to make sure it stayed on schedule. This called for quiet cajoling back towards war. It called for the “asset.” The Soldier played the scene in his head again: Planting the suicide note, shooting Belitrov in the head with his own state issued gun, followed by his quick escape when he heard his daughter coming up the stairs. While those bits of the memory were blurry, he could most clearly remember the anguished screams echoing out of the room once he vanished into the streets below. 

That scream was just one of many that echoed through his nightmares now. According to the file, after several years of fighting the authorities over the determined cause of Belitrov's death, his daughter Zhanna was sent to Belarus under the pretense of mental recuperation. She was given a home as credit for her father's service to his country, but it was clearly just a lighter exile than Siberia. By then, the Soviets were already deeply entrenched in the Afghani conflict, and tensions between east and west continued to escalate towards HYDRA's planned boiling point. Another victory for those who helped shape the century, and another ghost story for the Winter Soldier. 

Now he saw the effects of those tales first hand. He grimly beheld Belitrov's daughter, aged not only by time but by bitterness, trembling before him. He still didn't turn on the lights; she didn't want to see his softly furrowing brow and the regretful frown he tried to keep from tugging at the sides of his mouth. 

“What do you have to gain from killing me now?” she asked. “You should have come years ago. I think I'm owed a favor from you.” 

The soldier held out the file in his real hand, and the dim light above the kitchen table highlighted the age darkened manila and the black ink of the HYDRA head stamped onto the cover. 

“I already said. I'm not going to hurt you.” His voice was still placid, almost refusing to show any reaction to her grim request. It sounded like mockery, but to Zhanna Belitrova, everything did. She snatched the file from the Soldier's hand, her eyes constantly flickering between him and the papers. He silently watched her pore over the contents: old surveillance photos of her father, a list of those in the Politburo who could be squeezed into approving the assassination, and other members whose true loyalty was to HYDRA. There were reports on bribing the police to declare the death a suicide regardless of what they learned from the crime scene, and the top secret memo approving the use of The Asset, codename Winter Soldier. Lastly, she found the tentative plans made for her to also be killed, or possibly committed. When she failed to raise any significant uproar over Belitrov's death, they settled on shipping her out towards Minsk. It smothered her will to fight, and that was cleaner than another murder. 

“Why?” She nearly spat the question, though her tone was a garbled mess of disbelief and mourning. “It's been over thirty years." She took a steadying breath through her nose. "I don't know how you're the same, but most of the men listed here are dead. They've already gotten away with it.” The Soldier could still hear her anger, but it was overwhelmed by weariness. How many people had HYDRA puppeteered him into pushing this far? There was nearly forty years of this before the Belitrovs, on top of the thirty she suffered. 

“So?” she barked. "What is it? Are you a spirit sent to test me? You felt real enough--” She threw the file back at him, but the Soldier didn't flinch. Papers fluttered to the dirty floor, crinkling in the silence only accompanied by Zhanna's heavy breathing. The wrinkles of her face contorted into a leathery portrait of deep seated rage. She had always known the truth about her father, but to have it confirmed after decades of doubt and ridicule reignited the fire in her veins.

“Or do you think this makes up for what you did? A few old pieces of scrap in exchange for my father's blood, for the shit smeared upon his name?” She was shouting now, and her voice cracked. Her hands gripped the table behind her, white knuckled and shaking. No one would come running. The people of the village were used to the mad woman on the edge of town occasionally cursing no one at the top of her lungs. 

“I won't forgive you. Come back in another thirty years, and I still won't forgive you.” Her voice lowered again, quavering. The Soldier was still, like a stolid lightning rod for the tempest howling out from her. Once she finished, he finally spoke. 

“I don't want you to.” 

Zhanna Belitrova, for the first time in ages, didn't hear derision in those words. He didn't make excuses. The response wasn't vindictive. The Winter Soldier killed her father. That was the cold fact of the matter, and it was one of a thousand reasons why he intended to destroy what remained of HYDRA, whoever he was now. The Soldier left the papers at his feet. On the back of the list of Politburo members was information on the whereabouts of those still living, few as they were. It was more than enough to take back to Russia and clear some of the fog on the past, and more than she would ever be able to find in the current repressive state of Belarus. 

“Don't you dare leave my house without answering my question. Why?” 

The Soldier looked back at Zhanna Belitrova as he opened the door. Her expression was still full of contempt, but already he could see more pride than before. She peered more closely at him as her porch lamp partially lit his face at last, though the night breeze moved his hair over most of it. He already told her it wasn't for forgiveness, but that wasn't quite closure.

“Because it's the truth.” 

By the time she dashed to the entranceway to see where the Soldier went, any sign of him had completely vanished, as if he was the ghost she feared him to be from the beginning.


End file.
